Chessa Altieri, Stefano (2024) “A Middle Way for the Middle Kingdom” America’s Struggles to Come to Terms with Post-Tiananmen China June 1989 – June 1994. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Abstract

This doctoral dissertation aims to demonstrate how the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing and other major cities in China in early June 1989 forced a recalibration of U.S. priority hierarchy in its relationship with the PRC, while also revealing the complexities of the policymaking process in Washington, where strategic decisions became progressively entangled with domestic political considerations. By drawing a multifaceted picture of both governmental and non-governmental actors involved, the study aims to provide an integrated, dual-level examination – incorporating both top-down and bottom-up perspectives – of the forces influencing U.S.-China relations during this pivotal period. These new dynamics, the research shows, exacerbated the tension between a human right driven foreign policy, growing economic interests and interdependencies, and the objective to co-opt and integrate China within the post-Cold War US-led international order. Additionally, the massacre in Beijing undermined the prevailing belief that Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented reforms, initiated in the late 1970s, would lead to gradual political liberalization in China. It therefore exposed the limits of a problematic, triumphalist interpretation of the end of the Cold War as the definitive victory of freedom, democracy, and human rights. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States, as well as interviews with key individuals involved in the events under examination, this project provides a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of the competing interests and policy dynamics that shaped the U.S. response to China in the aftermath of the crackdown.

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